Hotels, institutional environments such as nursing homes and hospitals, prisons, and the like use heat retentive food serving systems for individually feeding the guests, patients, inmates or the like. These heat retentive food serving systems are designed to keep previously heated food warm prior to serving. Generally there is a period of time between when the food is either prepared or heated up to when the food is served. This situation comes about because in many circumstances the food must be delivered to the person. Also, the sheer number of people required to be fed might be quite large.
Accordingly, the prior art is replete with devices for keeping warmed food warm until the food can be served. These food service devices or products for keeping food warm can be divided into two types or categories. The first type is a heat retentive server that generally includes an insulated server base and an insulated cover or dome. The server base may be designed to hold a plate, in which case the base is known as a pellet base. A pellet base, cover, and plate is known as a pellet system.
The server or pellet base may include a solid heat sink or a phase change medium. These servers or pellet bases are initially heated to a proper temperature wherein the heat is stored for gradual dissipation during passive release of the stored heat. The released heat thus transfers to the plate and the food on the plate.
The other type of food service product is known as a thermalization cart or cabinet. The thermalization cart is designed to receive and store a plurality of trays, with each tray holding an entire meal that has been previously placed thereon. Once loaded, the entire thermalization cart is placed in a walk-in refrigerator or the like for storage. Many such carts may be prepared and stored depending on the number of people to be fed. This allows for the individual preparation of the entire meal well in advance of the day of feeding. Once it is desired to serve the meals, a heating control unit is activated to begin heating only the food desired to be heated. The thermalization cart remains in the refrigerator such that the cold food remains cold while the food to be warmed is heated.
Heating is achieved within the thermalization cart by individual heating elements that are associated with each shelf. Each shelf includes a number of heating pads corresponding to the areas on the trays where the food to be heated is placed. When the trays are place on the shelf, the heating pads are aligned directly below the particular food to be heated and thus served hot. In this manner, only the food that is to be heated is heated, while the rest of the food remains cold.
In order for the food to be heated, the prior art trays for thermalization carts have cutout portions for plates or other types of containers. The food to be heated is placed upon the plate or in the container. With the prior art, trays with only specially designed china plates can be used. The plates have flat bottoms for efficient contact with the heating unit, while conforming in size and shape to the cutout portion in the tray. Furthermore, the prior art requires the purchase, washing, and maintenance of extra items, not just the tray.
In view of the prior art shortcomings in thermalization cart trays, it is an object of the present invention to provide a tray that reduces the number of pieces associated with the prior art trays.
It is further an object of the present invention to provide a molded plastic tray eliminating the cutout portions wherein the tray has a variable thickness bottom wall to allow the cold food to remain cold while the other food is heated.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a one-piece tray for a thermalization cart from which food may be directly eaten. Such a tray may be used at hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and the like.